3.13.2005

The Method To My Madness

I looked through the raw html code and couldn't find anything that could be even remotely construed as a reason for my blog to be unpalatable to IE. I'm not giving up, I'm just saying that this could take a while.

Anyways, I said yesterday that I'd post about my Blogger rituals. No, this isn't a cop-out to get out of posting something entertaining, interesting, or insightful tonight... I swear...

As far as blog reading goes, I am not quite as expansive as others. Most of the blogs I read in a given day are the ones linked here, not only on the blog section but also those that are attatched to the webcomics. The others usually belong to people who post on my blog or the blogs I've linked. Occasionally I'll use the Next Blog button.

If your site blog has a comment of mine on it, congrats. You have managed the difficult task of sustaining my interest for more than fifteen seconds, and then, moreover, you've written something that catches my rather weird fancy.

As for the actual writing, the first thing I do is check the comments on my blog, and every site linked on my blog for updates, and furthermore search google news for anything interesting. However, what I actually decide to write about depends on what sort of mood I'm in. If I'm wired, you'll probably see something with maybe a bit of an edge to it, and sometimes in a Gonzo-ish manner. This will not be the time for philosophy, generally. If I'm responding to a news article, it'll probably something I'm riled up about one way or another. If I'm tired, but for some reason still choosing to stare into the screen and move my fingers across the keyboard, that is when the weirdness and the ranting, and occasionally the wild absurdity comes. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

no matter what my mood, I try to write in a way that when read, feels like someone else is reading it to you. It's still something I'm working on as a writer, and I hope this blog helps me go further towards that goal

Above all, unless I'm really in a shitty mood, (and usually even if I am) I try to breathe humor into my posts, and try to keep it fun, because if I don't enjoy writing it, I doubt many will enjoy reading.

Well, until next time, Peace.

8 comments:

  1. man, i wish i knew how to help you fix this DISASTER-- i mean, this slight weblog glitch =P .. maybe if you would've taken the BLUE PILL, none of this would've happened--

    DID I JUST SAY WHAT I THINK I SAID?

    Holy CANNOLI, i think i spent too much time reading Steve's blog, today.. Darn you, SCI-FI-ers!

    ok so i think your weblog is wildly entertaining. i love Love LOVE stopping by and making myself at home here. plus, your blogging methods are pretty similar to mine, so i KNOW they're fool-proof =P what more can you ask for?

    time for shut-eye. GOOD LUCK with your template... if you need any help, [booty]call me =P

    someone stop me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dylann, all I can say is...

    There is no spoon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. E.W, I just had a look at your source code. Find the first H1 tag - there's no closing tag for it. Maybe that's causing your problem?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks, Steve. I just fixed it.

    and Dylann, all I have to say is that flattery and Matrix references will get you everywhere

    ReplyDelete
  5. The Art of Blogging, good topic. About which I don't know that much but first as to writing. I try to remember I am writing my Blog for me, so what goes on there is what I am interested in at the moment. I hope other people read it if they want but if they don't I figure that's fine too. It's not as if I'm going to make any money off it or anything. So I figure I should write what I want to write and not what I think someone else wants to read.

    I read my comments and then E/W and Discomb. blogs and then I have a bunch saved in my favorites that I will check on from time to time. Some people don't update regularly so I don't go back to theirs as much.

    I blurf a lot just to see what's out there. I comment on anything that interests me whenever comments are enabled. I figure if comments are enabled the person must want comments. I've had a couple of interesting discussions because of it. Yesterday, I had a back and forth with someone on teaching foreign languages in our schools, so I saved her blog, we'll see if it becomes one of my regular stops.

    I find that there are a lot of high schoolers on here and their stuff is not usually that interesting although I have had a dialogue with this high school junior about the purpose of life. Like I would know but hopefully he's impressed with my great insights.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I disagree, Saije. You clearly know quite enough about the art of blogging.

    Or rather, you know quite enough to keep an excellent blog. I don't think that theres anyone in the Blogosphere that couldn't stand to learn more. But it's a new art. It can only get better.

    Though one thing that could help us all more is learning about RSS feeds. I'm a little hazy on the specifics, but they're designed to increase the efficiency with which you read content that updates on a regular basis.

    Right now I use tabbed browsing to open all of my links at once, and then I can quickly close the tabs for pages that haven't updated.

    I think that the key here is to cast the widest net possible, and see what interesting things you find.

    I share your apathy towards most highschool blogs. And I'm surprised that your dialogue with the Junior didn't end up going like:

    We're not here because we're free, we're here because we're not free. There's no escaping reason, no denying purpose because as we both know, without purpose we would not exist.

    It is purpose that created us.

    Purpose that connects us.

    Purpose that pulls us.

    That guides us.

    That drives us.

    It is purpose that defines us.

    Purpose that binds us.

    We are here because of you, Mr. Anderson. We're here to take from you what you tried to take from us, purpose.

    I love that monologue.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I enjoy the occasional blurfing, but I must say that coming across spam blogs is starting to annoy me. The other day I kept clicking the 'next blog' button and I honestly got five spamblogs in a row. Hmm, I wonder if spamblog is a word? If it isn't, I hereby claim it. :)

    Blogging is such an incredibly young form of communication - we're all learning as we go along, and more importantly, the technology will continue to change and improve. danah boyd told me (in regard to the concept of 'Internet Sociology') every discipline that is affected by the Internet is in a constant state of flux. To me, that's what makes it all so interesting - we're really doing something new here. This form of communication has never existed before.

    RSS feeds - I don't know much about them either, except that 'news aggregators' use them to track changes to multiple blogs. Apparently you can get news reader applications that will download RSS feeds from your selected blogs/news sources and present any new items to you in a neatly organised manner. Or something like that. I'm sure I'll investigate sooner or later. There's a lot of talk about RSS and news feeds in the blogosphere so I suspect it's something we, as bloggers, need to know.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Actually what I said was the purpose of life is to live purposefully. Deep, eh?

    I don't understand the RSS stuff either. I am trying to figure out how to "embed" code from various blog directories so that it "links back"....I don't get any of it. I have to find out. Supposedly this will increase my readership.

    But then I ask myself, just how many readers can I realistically expect? or do I truly want? When I originally started my blog back in May '04, I had intended it to be a place to put my political thoughts as a run up to the election. But then I moved, was offline for months (home computer had flamed out), the election is over and the political stuff isn't my focus now. So I think my blogging is more eclectic now.

    We are definitely on the ground floor, or close to it, on blogging so I guess it's going to become whatever we all make it. I think part of the problem is going to be the share mass of content taken cumulatively that is out there. It is hard to absorb...I mean, blogger.com isn't the only blogging site. I haven't even tried anywhere else.

    ReplyDelete